PTA Theft, or mom goes to jail?

Stealing from the schools? tsk, tsk.. some people will just go that low. This actually doesn't surprise me much since it's commonly known that people living in NYC have no morals at all, unlike here in DC. You wont find stories like this in our local media, I know; because I looked!!

Woman charged with $40K in PTA theft

BY HERBERT LOWE
STAFF WRITER

September 8, 2005

The former president of a Queens elementary school PTA allegedly stole $40,000 from the group's funds in what officials are calling the largest such theft in city history. Laura AlQaisi, 38, who led the PTA at PS 152 in Woodside from 1996 to 2003, was released without bail Wednesday after being arraigned on grand larceny and other charges in Criminal Court in Kew Gardens. She was arrested on Tuesday outside her home in Flushing, prosecutors said. Shielding herself from the media behind a black blazer, her sister and court officers, AlQaisi offered no comments while rushing from the courthouse and into a cab on Queens Boulevard.

"At the end of the day here the numbers that we're hearing are not going to be totally correct or not correct at all," AlQaisi's attorney, Eugene Levy, told Judge Mary O'Donoghue. Prosecutors said AlQaisi admits not depositing into the PTA's bank account $23,400 the school's students raised through the sale of chocolate and other items from 1999 to 2003.

AlQaisi, who handled all financial matters during her presidency, also wrote out numerous PTA checks totaling $16,600 to herself or payable to "cash" and concealed it by controlling the records and checkbook, prosecutors said. In one instance, they said, she signed a $3,300 check to herself but wrote in the register it was for a $48 "candy sale reimbursement." "PS 152's parents, teachers and students have spent many years raising tens of thousands of dollars for a school computer room -- only now to see that dream callously erased by the defendant, who allegedly used the association's funds as her own private piggy bank," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement. "Her alleged conduct is a betrayal of the trust of the parents who elected her to serve as their leader."

The theft was first discovered last year after AlQaisi's successor as president, Laura Druiett, reported to the school's principal, Robert Burke, that the association did not have as much money in the bank as expected. Officials from the city Department of Education investigated and then confronted AlQaisi in April 2004. A month later, she produced receipts totaling about $6,000 for teacher supplies and student awards. But she stopped returning the investigators' calls after May 2004, sources familiar with the investigation said.

"We definitely want restitution," said Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the education department. If convicted, AlQaisi faces up to 7 years in prison.